Let's say , it wasn't a bad year....

Back in summer.....

I thought we'd do a little catch up, since the whole baby having thing, sort of eclipsed keeping up with the blog.

This is a picture of our house as it looks best.... with some trees and shrubbery obscuring it.  While I did design and build my house myslef, being a timber frame, made of all locally milled timbers, in a cute bavarian sort of style.... I never put any siding on it, so therefore it has sat with tar paper sides for almost 8 years!

That barn on the left however, that only took 3 years to look that good.  Just don't look on the other side.

I'm here to tell you, when consider roofing options, look no further than enameled standing seam steel rooves!  I got a number for a guy...

Here we're lookin at the same veg, from the opposite direction.  Historically, this is the house that own my land.  All the land up the River Rd. was cut into 100 acre strips that went from The Kennebec River to the Abbagadasett River, and this house looked out over it's fields. Now they have about 12 acres and look at my fields.  It's probably a lot easier to look out over all my work, than to farm themselves.

This is Eric Furgeson from Harvest Tide Organics.  If you're one of my chef customers, then you should remember that name from the availibilty list... since there were various points over the season when they had as much stuff on my list as I did.

Here I captured Eric and his truck on what I realized would be one of the last summer hauls.

Is Eric really this much of a dork....?  Kinda yeah, but that's why we love him.

One thing this summer's drought was good for, was ploughing new ground.  This here spot, is one of the wetter places on the farm.... but in the end of August , I borrowed Farmer Kev's 2 bottom plow, and easily tore up the sod, never lost traction.... plowed for days.

New ground added to the mix..... just when we thought we'd hit our ceiling.... between this tractor, experience, and good soil improvement strategies,  we have found that more of the farm is usable than we'd ever hoped.

Emily caught this neat picture of the sun set.  We live on just enough of a rise, with just enough open space on either side, that we get both the best sunrises, and the best sun sets.  We often get these halos of orange or pink light, ringing our entire field.... westward in the morning, eastward in the evening.

How many of my old delivery vehicles can you spot in this picture?

This was our last carrot seeding, on the field closest to the road.  These are the dragon carrots that we're selling you right now.  These grew mostly post drought, and so were part of the fall success story, that in the end, just about outweighed the intense misery of the summer.

This is about as perfect as a carrot planting can look.  The best thing about this plot, is the way it rises and drops off, it looked so good from the road, or when you pulled in our drive way... the classic rolling green.

Leeks
celeriac
cabbage

This greenhouse is one of the cooler things going on the farm; I threw it together with a bunch of junky used greenhouse parts, it's on a hill, it's low and hard to use, but it grows the best ginger going!  It covers the bases, it fakes Hawai'i well enough, it grosses 3 times the value of itself, every year!

Turmeric is the banana leaf lookin stuff, and the ginger is the bamboo lookin stuff.

Ian, Turmeric, John Deere 5075E

Peaches fears that baby Hugo may be cuter than herself..... it drives her to such desperately cute juxtapositions.

Let's call this "preparing for fall"

Frost warning led to having to make a plan quick!  Can't let the 10,000 pounds of squash that we eaked out of this hard hard year, be lost to frost burn.  I had to toss together enough of these crates, to get all our squash out of the field, and into our storage container.
(What's up Dewalt? Wanna cut me off a sponsorship deal)

Here we see a few of the winners from the squash field.  Thank you awesome tractor, for the ability to lift these massive crates like they're nothing.

Remind me not to grow so much Musque D'Provence next year.

In the background there, you see  the vines withering away.  What a great team effort.... me, the vines, some drip lines....Boom,  10,000 pounds of food.

First frost.
or
The fall of the nasturtiums.

This is a sunrise, across field 1.  If you think this photo is stunning, imagine what I thought when I walked out into this scene that perfect October morning.

If you ask me, this is where food should come from.  It can grow in Maine.  Here it is.  These carrots grew along a stone wall, by the edge of the woods.  Some deer came out and chomped the tops, but not enough to hurt anything.  They grew here in this mediocre soil, that could never be utilized in a big scale mechanical operation... it's too ledgy down deep, too tilty a grade, not long enough runs.  This is the perfect usage of this land, and the perfect place for this food.  Here on this little farm, the children who live here come out and pluck carrots to eat while they walk down to the woods.  Here is where Peaches runs between row, in search of voles.  This is where I look out over the field , and say "Thank God this isn't the bad old days (like just 30 years ago) where I would get 3 cents a pound for carrots...."

If you ever see a tree like this, and wonder why ever a tree would be 2 colors in this way, it's because it's not a tree.... it's two trees.  That's a red maple on the left, and a poplar on the right.  They have been together their whole lives, so their canopy grew as one tree.  These trees look this great every Autumn, but I don't always have such a wonderful contrast of the blue broccoli, and the orange morning light.

This is us.  We're always here.  Six of us so far.... livin off organic vegetables.

Thanks everybody!!!!